


to reconcile our deaths

by missaa



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Abigail Hobbs Dies, Angst, Canon Compliant, Medicinal Drug Use, Mind Manipulation, Mind Palace, Post-Fall (Hannibal)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:41:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24940993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missaa/pseuds/missaa
Summary: How he got roped into this exercise is beyond him.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	to reconcile our deaths

“Open.” 

Will does as told, not that he is given much choice; Hannibal holds his jaw and he sticks his tongue out, accepting drops of something sticky and chemically sweet into his mouth. It tastes rich, and he licks the residue from the underside of his lower lip. 

How he got roped into this exercise is beyond him. Some suppressed desire to please in conjunction with morbid curiosity, maybe. Hannibal had promised nothing concrete in return for the experiment, but he spoke in a way that conveyed he knew Will would agree regardless. And Will, of course, had lived up to expectation. 

The blindfold is unnecessary, Will thinks, but Hannibal had been insistent. Deprivation of one sense to heighten another. And there might be some merit to it because Will can smell the snow on the grass outside, and his heartbeat is exponentially louder in his ears. 

“Tastes like caramel,” Will says. “What is it?” 

Hannibal cards his fingers through Will’s hair. The callouses on his palms scratch lightly against Will’s forehead. “It will help you relax,” he explains without explaining. “And provide you with the necessary clear-headedness needed for this exercise. You may feel some sedating effects.” 

Will swallows mild panic. He isn’t sure if he likes the sound of that. Actually, he definitely doesn’t, and the thumping in his ears kicks up a notch. “Sedating?”

“You will not be cognitively impaired.” Hannibal sounds much farther away now. “It will be easier to recall repressed memories, sharpen details to fine points. It will aid in the construction of your memory palace. You may find your thoughts to be undesirable. Do not fight it, Will; this exercise will only work as much as you let it.” 

Will sits back in the chair and tries to relax. He’s always found the concept of a memory palace a touch pretentious, but he doesn’t have the good sense to poke fun at it now. His head is swimming and the lower half of his face is much too heavy. “Hannibal,” he murmurs, reaching out. The last vestige of reality slips through his fingers as Hannibal’s hand grabs his own. 

_ “Why are we standing here?” _

“Abigail?” Will opens his eyes and has only a second to find his footing before he tumbles off the cliff. The Atlantic roars beneath him, swirling and vengeful, claiming sinful souls in its tide. He’s on the bluff again, with no idea how he got there. He turns. The wind whips his hair in front of his eyes, but he can see her— he can see Abigail through the strands, her head tilted, eyes curious and damp. “God. Abigail.”

She smiles. Her scarf is plaid. Her eyes are blue. It really is her. 

“You’re bad at answering questions,” she says. “Come inside.”

The sliding glass door is shattered, and Will stands among the shards. Abigail holds out a glass of red wine in offering. He takes it hesitantly, swirls it around and brings it to his nose. It smells like blood. He takes a sip. 

It  _ is  _ blood. 

“Thank you,” he says, and when she smiles again her teeth are all stained red. 

“Hannibal brought you here,” Abigail says, and Will remembers. Her expression turns cloudy. “Is it bad, to miss him?” 

Will sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like  _ not  _ to miss him.” He sips from the glass again. The taste quenches a strange thirst he’d been previously unaware of, soothes some ache in his gut. “He has such nice hands. A musician’s hands, a  _ surgeon’s _ hands.” He laughs at that. “They have the capability to save and the… the propensity to  _ destroy _ . And sometimes I wish…” He shakes his head. 

Abigail steps closer. “What?” 

“I wish he’d strangle the life out of me with them.”

Abigail laughs humorlessly. She reaches up (her hands are shaking so badly, Will wants to take them in his own, make them stop but he can’t move, can’t figure out the mechanics that would require) and tugs the edge of her scarf down. Her throat is cut clean through. There’s no blood to mask the inside of her trachea. Her carotid is strangely undamaged, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. “He’s killed me twice,” she says. “You won’t like it as much as you think.”

Will reaches out and fixes her scarf. He can’t bear to look another second. 

“Was it everything you’d hoped?” Abigail asks, turning to look out at the bluff. “To kill with him?”

“No.” Will pauses. His reflection stares back at him from the wine glass, distorted and foreign. It might not even be him. “It was… it was more. It was powerful.”

“You tried to kill yourself afterward. You tried to kill him. Was that the powerful part?”

A strangled noise slips through Will’s clenched teeth. He tips the glass back, downs the rest of the contents. It tastes like cold saltwater. He lets it drop to the ground, but it doesn’t shatter. It doesn’t even crack. 

“I had to  _ stop us,”  _ he bites. “I couldn’t— I couldn’t live with myself, knowing what I turned into and what he has always been. What we could become if we… if I let us.”

Abigail regards him sadly. As Will watches, tiny nubs, like doe antlers, start to poke through her hair. She doesn’t seem to notice. Will hopes she never does. 

“Look at you now,” she says quietly. “I guess it didn’t work out.”

“Look at  _ yourself,  _ look at what he  _ did _ to you, Abby—“ Will breathes in sharply, closes his eyes. “You’re dead.” He says this like a realization. 

“And you wish you were, too, don’t you? Don’t you wish it had worked?” The antlers stretch towards the ceiling, blossom flowers that die before they can fully bloom. Will is horrified when he sees them. It is beautiful and he is horrified to his core. The petals fall and shrivel when they hit the ground, turn into ash that releases thick smoke into the air. “Then you wouldn’t have to live with the guilt. You wouldn’t have to live at all. It’s peaceful. No fear. No nightmares. Don’t you crave that, more than anything?”

_ “Don’t you?”  _

Will gasps like he is taking first breath when the light floods back in. His mouth is sticky and tastes sickeningly like caramel liqueur, and he grabs blindly for anything that might ground him to reality. He’s not sure he knows what that is anymore. 

“Abigail,” he says— no,  _ sobs,  _ and he presses his face into his hands to muffle the sound. He hears himself saying  _ no, no _ over and over again until strong hands grab his shoulders and all but force him against something warm and solid. Hannibal’s chest. He knows it well enough to recognize, and the feeling helps him start to reorient. The disgust filters in a second later. 

“You saw Abigail.” It’s not phrased like a question, but Will knows Hannibal is asking. 

He sucks in a far too shallow breath. “Yeah. Yes.” 

Hannibal doesn’t press. For once, he doesn’t press, and Will is so relieved he thinks he could cry if he weren’t so suddenly exhausted. “Do you want to lie down?”

Will swallows hard. He wants water. He doesn’t ask for it. “Will I—“ his voice comes out shaky. Damn it. “Will I see her again if I…?”

“The…” Hannibal pauses and his hand makes an arc over the curve of Will’s back. “The serum should have worn off by now. If you see her, it will only be a dream.”

Will laughs, muffled by Hannibal’s shirt. His hands are trembling so badly and he wants to make them stop but he can’t move, can’t figure out the mechanics that would require, so he doesn’t bother. “Okay,” he concedes. “I could use some sleep.”

He doesn’t dream of her that night. Instead, he dreams of himself and Hannibal alone on the bluff, the ocean swallowing them whole and failing to spit them back out, as it should have the first time.  Abigail had been right. It’s peaceful, not to have any nightmares for once. 

**Author's Note:**

> i log on. i post 1 fic that i did not proof read. i disappear for an indeterminate amount of time. enjoy 
> 
> (i love u all)


End file.
